Taxation is not Unbiblical
In many of the more conservative Christian circles there is this radical idea that taxation is completely against Christian morality and principles. The argument is always a strange syncretism of Libertarianism and Christianity and usually follows these lines:
God created man to work, and work is good. The fruits of a man’s labor are his and his alone. No one has rights to another man’s resources, taking it is theft. The government takes a man’s income through threats of prison and physical violence as taxes. Clearly this is theft and also against the commandments of God. Therefore taxation is immoral and unbiblical.
The argument is compelling, but not well thought out.
Firstly, as all Americans (and all citizens of free nations) know, the power of government derives from the consent of the governed. This is a basic tenant of Classical Liberalism, from which the modern ideology of Libertarianism gets its basis. If free men make up a society then the rules and rulers of that society can only have the powers given to them by that society. One of the most familiar examples of this is a democracy like the government of the US. Free people elect others to represent them, who then create the rules of society. By electing these leaders to do their will, the people are consenting tacitly to follow them. Therefore, anyone voluntarily and peacefully living in such a society has also consented to the laws created by these elected officials. Therefore if taxes are part of these laws, they cannot be stealing since the citizens have consented to give up their money freely.
Secondly, while the Bible is explicitly against stealing, the Bible is also just as explicitly for paying taxes. In Luke 20:22 Jesus is asked “Is it right for us to pay taxes to Caesar or not?” Noting that the coin had Caesar’s face on it, he famously answers: “Then give to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s.” Its hard to get more explicit than that: if it is the government’s then give it to the government. If the government requires taxes from you, then pay them. This is repeated again by Paul in Romans 13:6-7 “This is also why you pay taxes, for the authorities are God’s servants, who give their full time to governing. Give everyone what you owe him: If you owe taxes, pay taxes; if revenue, then revenue; if respect, then respect; if honor, then honor.”
Lastly, on a more theological note, when trying to baptize the accumulation of personal wealth as something ordained by God, one should keep in mind that God doesn’t have a particularly high view the rich. One simply has to look at Jesus’ exhortations to give up all earthly possessions and his oft repeated statement about it being easier for a rich man to go through the eye of a needle than to enter heaven. Wealth is just as much a hinderance as a blessing for a Christian. Therefore Christians should weigh the retention of their material wealth against the possibility of that wealth providing a social safety net for the unfortunate, or providing protection for their neighbors.
No one likes paying taxes. However taxation is a necessary way to fund services that maintain order and make living in a modern society possible. Everyone is aware that their taxes go to fund roads and police, but in the US huge amounts of tax dollars are also spent on research grants for medicine, science, and technologies that do not have any immediate monetary return. The DARPA network was one such project, and apparently that turned out pretty well. So, while there is always waste to be eliminated, Christians simply cannot assert that taxation is stealing or that it is inherently immoral.
A good article. You could develop a couple of things more, though.
1. The Old Testament offering system. While not always used for traditional taxation purposes (e.g. sometimes burnt), offerings were a taking (or giving, depending on your point of view) of one’s property. When used for the upkeep of the Levitical priesthood, it is much more tax-like.
2. Your ending point about cutting out waste. You briefly touch on it, but I think it could be expanded as a very valid critique that the “conservative Christians” bring to the table.
Actually, libertarianism merely evolved from classical liberalism. It doesn’t get its basis from it. This can be seen with the evolution of libertarianism to include even varieties of anarchism. And of course, those anarchists are also often philosophical anarchists.
Also, I would actually question the legitimacy of the notion of consent that you are assuming as obvious.
1) I am not everybody. So to say, “the people elect X”, doesn’t mean that I voted for X or that I consented to obey X by voting. I could vote for a large number of reasons, all of which having no bearing on my actual allegiance. Even further, I could have abstained from voting altogether, so there is consent granted by the voting process that I see. Heck, given that voters are the minority, it is hard to claim that “the people” have done anything.
2) The notion of implicit consent doesn’t work. There are a large number of problems:
a) Moving is an enormous expense. This is relevant because in order to call something “consent”, we have to say that getting out of the supposed contract is something that can be done by a reasonable person. The issue is that we don’t see this in this situation. Rather, the barriers to switching are larger than most products we would call a monopoly. In fact, I would have to argue that if we saw these barriers in any other “industry”, we would not call this consent at all.
b) “Peacefully” is a problem. You have to recognize that if anybody violated the law, they would suffer immensely. The problem here is that basically, by you taking this premise, you are stacking the deck for your own idea. It is hardly consent if dissent leads to immense suffering/loss.
c) These requirements seem to beg the question. You see, in order for voluntary co-existence to be consent, we have to assume that the government is legitimate, but the government is legitimate because people implicitly consent, but people can only implicitly consent if the government is legitimate. So, we have a circle between implied consent and legitimacy that ends up destroying the notion.
d) Arguably any government at any time can be held as having implicit consent, even very bad governments who take extreme actions. The issue is that we don’t regard bad governments as highly legitimate, even though I think your theory forces us to predict that they often are. Perhaps you’ll qualify the matter more, but you can’t say that everybody tries to escape even a bad government, and certainly you have to admit that even our government includes in your existence here a possibility of being executed or drafted to possibly die for a cause you don’t really agree with.
Now, I just bring this up simply because I dislike social contract theory. I mean, one can still feel fine with paying taxes and not have social contract theory, but I don’t think it works to analytically prove consent.
As for your argument for taxation, the issue is not whether it is Biblical to pay taxes, but rather whether it is Biblical to ask for them. I think one could reasonably argue that your verses don’t apply so much to the latter question. I would think though that to go totally anti-tax, one would have to argue for removing the government entirely. (even tariffs are still taxes on individuals) However, I think most people don’t want to go that far. (If they did, then I think they could make a Biblical case that government is immoral. For instance, with Luke 4:5-6, to argue that Satan owns governments.)
“Therefore Christians should weigh the retention of their material wealth against the possibility of that wealth providing a social safety net for the unfortunate, or providing protection for their neighbors.”
The problem is that it is only a hindrance for the Christian. You have to recognize that if you are going to make this argument, then you could just as justifiably argue for holding to Sodomy laws for protecting the virtue of society, as it is still trying to hold people who may not be Christians to a higher burden for a Christian causes. After all, social virtue can also be considered a public good as many conservatives point out. As it stands, one can make the argument that the Christian notion of goodness is one of personal sacrifice.
As for your last point, I am sure that every anarchist would disagree with you, but I like radical political theory more than you do.